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Jail for rude students
The French are doing our schools’ “zero tolerance” policies one better: French pupils face jail for insulting teachers. Apparently they mean it. The cabinet has already allocated $5 billion for hiring specialized judges and constructing detention centers. Why can’t something more informal and gentle than the slammer keep young people in order? The old dream of
the rule of law seems to be ending in a society in which only law rules. Informal networks of authority based on age,
sex, class, religion and social custom are now thought oppressive and irrational, and must be extirpated. We must have a
multicultural society, by definition one in which no informal standards of behavior can have any authority. The
result, however, is a society without common sense or forebearance in which mindless regimentation becomes the
only alternative to chaos.
Comments
In a multiracial, multicultural polity, there are only two choices: chaos or tyranny-authoritarianism. In either case we win, though not without severe sacrifice. As the power elite continues to import unassimilable third world immigrants to Western nations, the opportunies for Western counter-revolution increase: because 1) chaos leads to instability and war, giving the West the opportunity to reconquer occupied territories by force, and 2) tyranny/authoritarian rule produces and legitimises opposition. Posted by: William on September 9, 2002 11:13 AMI’m not that fond of “the worse the better” theories. Still, I agree that if left/liberalism were able to create a stable smoothly-functioning social order things would be much worse. Its crisis is our opportunity, although I’d rather it didn’t have to come to that. Posted by: Jim Kalb on September 9, 2002 12:31 PMOn this matter, see “Lock Them Up First: How Liberalism Begets Fascism” by Theodore Dalrymple. It’s in today’s Daily Telegraph, and available at National Review Online. WW Posted by: WW on September 10, 2002 1:55 PM |